While It does seem a little late in the game for The
Asylum to
get around to mockbusting 2004’s ‘The Day After
Tomorrow’ but this is
what we have, kind of, with the epic crapterpiece ‘2012:
Ice Age’, the
third.. count ‘em, third… ‘2012’ movie we’ve seen from
the erstwhile
hardworking film studio. I think we can slot this one,
as far as
entertainment value is concerned, by placing above the
absolutely,
stupefyingly horrific ‘2012: Doomsday’,
but it does fall short of the pure magical insanity that
was ‘2012: Supernova’.

I don’t believe the year is actually 2012 and I didn’t
see a
single Mayan during this movie but the year is
unimportant since 2012
is simply a marketing strategy. If you put a number in
front of your
movie, Video on Demand customers, who apparently don’t
like to scroll,
will see your numbered movie way before they make it all
the way down
to ‘Zebra Crossing’ or whatever. Genius.

Right off the bat I can inform you that I have no idea
of the
science behind this one. I saw people talking and words
were coming out
of their mouths but hell if I could make heads or tails
of what they
were trying to say. What I do know is that a big chunk
of the
North Pole has broken off and is racing to America to
muck us up. This
is where we are introduced to Bill Hart (Patrick
Labyorteaux) who is
some kind of scientist who is aware of this thing and is
working like
the dickens to get his family out of Maine. Before this
happened Dr.
Bill dropped off his disrespectful, but admittedly hot
daughter Julia
(Katie Wilson) at the airport so she could go back to
college in
NYC to be with her boyfriend (Kyle Morris). Then armed
with the bad
news he motors, along with his whiney teenage son Nelson
(Nick
Afanasiev), to pick up his phenomenally bitchy wife Teri
(Julie
McCollough). I mean Dr. Bill goes to his wife’s office
to pick her up
so they could escape to Aunt Sissy’s house in Florida to
avoid certain
death, and all this wife of his could do was verbally
berate and
belittle my man. True enough, if you look at Dr. Bill he
does seem like
somebody who’s been belittled quite a bit in his day,
but that’s
besides the point.

Anyway, we have this evil glacier racing down the east
coast
at 200mph, again I don’t know why, and it’s crushing
everything in its
path. First Newfoundland, then Boston and it’s on its
way to New York
City. Yup, exactly where baby girl is.

Now don’t think that our government is sitting idly by
allowing this disaster to happen, no sir. First they
send jets to
missile strike the hell out the glacier which made the
glacier chunk
off into super huge 100 foot flying daggers. Then they
decide to nuke
the glacier which made the glacier chunk off into super
huge 100 foot
flying daggers. Then they decide to depth charge the
glacier making the
glacier chunk off into super huge 100 foot flying
daggers. While it was
pretty clear that bombing the glacier wasn’t going to
work, we admire
their steadfast dedication to futility.

But this is about our family. Recognize that the
daughter has
been led to almost certain death to New Jersey by her
sickly looking
boyfriend. Regardless, our fractured family must drive a
beat up car…
Dr. Bill had to physically roll up the window in his car
whenever he
had to talk to somebody, a feature in autos I didn’t
even know still
existed… crash this car, steal a car, blow up a street,
get jacked by a
psycho bum, break into a house, help a black dude, fly a
Cessna, and
crash a Cessna before making it to Jersey to be united
with their baby
girl. Not save their baby girl because it’s the end of
days and all,
but to be reunited so that they all can die together
like a real family
should. Unless something amazing happens, like the
Glacier getting
tired or something.

One thing I like about The Asylum is that they take
care of
their own. While I’m unfamiliar with Travis Fort, the
director of this
movie, I’d bet he started out at The Asylum mailroom. If
you are
fortunate enough to get a gig at The Asylum and hang
around for a
couple of years, eventually they will let you direct a
movie. That’s
awesome. I have been actively championing myself for a
job at The
Asylum for years, fully recognizing that it would be a
significant pay
cut considering the healthy chunk of change I make doing
what I do
know, but it’s fallen on deaf ears. Dang.

But back to ‘2012: Ice Age’, was it a good movie? Of
course it
wasn’t, but that’s not really the point now, is it? The
shoddy special
effects, suspect acting and erratic pacing are pretty
much a given so
we find our entertainment in other regions, and believe
me, there is
entertainment to unearth if you dig for it. Such as when
the Colonel
(Sean Corey Cooper) and his helicopter pilot watched and
smiled
gloriously when they depth charged that mountain of evil
ice, beautiful
explosions all around them. Sure, they probably
should’ve been trying
to fly away instead of grinning like idiots, but I do
take solace in
that the actors live on, even if the characters they
were playing are
dead. Or when the guy, around 6’6" 265, tried to beat up
the boyfriend,
about 5’6" 115, and take his coat because it was cold
and stuff. What
was he going to do with that coat? Use it as a leg
warmer? I also
enjoyed ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ Sudden Freeze Effect,
even though it
only happened once. And that glacier was nothing if not
inconsistent.
One minute its flash freezing folks, the next minute
it’s dropping snow
colored confetti on them, then it will drop a twister or
two on you…
make up your mind Mr. Glacier! I know the plan was to
melt the glacier
with the nukes, but did the government think about the
potential
ramifications of melting a 200mph glacier the size of
North Carolina?
Of course they didn’t. Damn government. Can we give
special props to
Ted Monte as the Psycho Bum? Of course we can, it’s my
article. Mr.
Monte was on his A-Game and probably should be allowed
to direct the
next Asylum disaster movie they have in the chamber.

If they had put some Ninjas or Hillbillys in this movie
instead of whiney kids, then it could’ve challenged
‘2012: Supernova’
and its magic, but we didn’t get any Ninjas. But we did
get some poorly
acted nonsense with suspect effects. Oddly enough, this
is what
expected and it’s always a good day when one can find
their
expectations met.